Table of Contents
There are a few modules that can be used with Issue Tracker and these are described in this section. Additional modules may be released between releases of the Issue Tracker component and heir details will be added to this document when the component update is released. Where there are any restriction on specific versions of the component that the module can be used against, this is highlighted in the text.
The requirement was for a module to enable administrators to display a short list of issues within a module for display on the front end of the web site.
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All issues selected for display have to have been published for visibility on the front end of the site. All other criteria fro the display selection is configured through the configuration for the module. |
The module is installed in the standard Joomla manner and the configuration display for the module is as shown in Latest Issues Module Configuration below.
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Release 1.4.2 (and later) includes the 'Latest Issues Module' as standard in the component installation file. It is therefore not necessary to install it separately. |
The main parameter setting where the module is published is show below. The title choice will possibly need to be changed to reflect the specific issues that are displayed.
The main settings for the issues to be shown, is displayed below. The projects selection is multiple choice and it is possible to pick which projects (and subjects) to be selected.
The status field also allows for multiple selection, so for example it may be desired to only display ‘Closed’ and ‘Deferred’ issues. The ‘all’ selection will enable all issues within the selected projects to be displayed.
The number of issues to be displayed is used to limit the number of issues returned from the database call, and effects the ‘length’ of the module display.
The Ordering field is the used to determine the order in which the selected issues are shown in the module list, whilst the list direction indicates the sort order of the issues.
The width of the module will ultimately determine whether the Issue summary (title) is wrapped, and to avoid issue summaries causing a large amount of overlap, the ‘tile length’ parameter restricts the length of the text displayed.
Optionally it may be desired to full issue information returned when the link is clicked in a modal (popup) window. The next three parameters ) enable this, and specify the size of the displayed modal box.
There is an option to disable the display of the child issue links, however it is suspected that this option is unlikely to be used since the whole purpose of the module is to show the most recent issue (depending upon selected criteria).
The advanced options control whether the module results are cached or not and also permit the use of site specific CSS settings. The module is supplied with some suitable values which it is hoped will be suitable for most sites, but for those who desire to use their own settings, this ‘module class suffix’ enables this to be achieved.
A sample of the displayed module is show below. The issue close date is show underneath the Issue number, and the shortened length (title length parameter). When the title has been shortened the final character (default >) is indicated at the end of the title text.
The title (and associated issue number) are web links that when clicked will display the details of the issue as configured in the component settings.
If it is desired to have additional modules to show issues for different projects, this is easily achieved by adding the module a second time in the ‘Extensions - Module Manager’. Each displayed module is independent. So for example if there were two specific projects that had to be displayed separately there could be two Latest Issues Modules used, one for each specific project. Alternatively both projects could be displayed on the same module if desired.
It is possible to apply a specified CSS style to the latest issues module as a configuration option to enable matching to the site 'style'
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It is advisable to ensure that the version of the 'latest issues module' is appropriate for the version of Issue Tracker deployed. This is due to the fact that changes in the underlying table structure in different releases may prevent 'older' module versions from displaying correctly. [This is not a concern with release 1.4.2 and later since the correct module is included with the component when it is installed.] |
If the module is being exercised by a logging in user then the issue displayed will provide the registered user with the ability to add some additional information to the issue. See section Front Editing Permissions for details.